Categories
Chicago Funny Business

Chicago. The Cowles Commission Song. Ca. 1950.

Again Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is happy to provide its readers with an undated Chicago economics department parody found in the files of Milton Friedman. While I can say with complete confidence that the Chicago lyrics were written sometime between 1942 and 1955 (when the Cowles Commission moved on to New Haven), I figure this patriotic war-time tune might have declined in popularity and familiarity starting in the late 1940’s. Thus, for the sake of argument, I’ll just say the “Cowles Commission Song” was written ca. 1950.

Thank goodness for both YouTube and Archive.org and of course our old friend Google, I was able to find the original lyrics to the song “We Must Be Vigilant” and links to a movie rendition as well as this recording of the “We Must Be Vigilant” performed by Ziggy Lane and the the Chico Marx Orchestra. That’s right, Groucho’s older brother.

Perhaps someone will rise to the challenge of producing a Karaoke version of this Cowles Commission Song.  Do we historians of economics know how to party or what?

 

 

COWLES COMMISSION SONG
(to the tune of The American Patrol)

WE MUST BE VIGILANT

Adapted from F.W. Meacham’s “American Patrol”. Music adapted by Joseph A. Burke. Words by Edgar Leslie. (1942)
We must be rigorous,
We must be rigorous,
We must fulfill our role;
If we hesitate
Or equivocate,
We won’t achieve our goal.
We must investigate
Our system, complicate
To make our models whole;
Econometrics
brings about
Statistical control.

Our esoteric seminars
bring statisticians by the score.
But try to find economists
Who don’t think algebra a bore.
O, we must urge them all emphatically
To become inclined mathematically
So that all that we’ve developed, may
Someday be applied.

We Must be Vigilant!
We Must Be Vigilant!
American Patrol!
With arms for the army,
Ships for the navy,
Let this be our goal.
We must be diligent!
We must be diligent!
American Patrol.
Protect our shoreline
To the door line
Of ev’ry native soul.

We need this solidarity
Or else divided we will fall;
It means the popularity
Of peace and happiness for all.
Behind this cause we must keep rallying,
Let there be no dilly dallying;
Keep us free from shill-shallying
Hark to freedom’s call.

(repeat first 11 lines)

Image Source: Mikael Uhlin’s Marxology at marx-brothers.org.

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Harvard

Harvard Alumnus. A.W. Marget. Too Jewish for Chicago? 1927.

Harvard economics Ph.D. (1927), Arthur William Marget (1899-1962), went on to teach at the University of Minnesota (ca 1927-1941) after which he began his second career as an economist at the Fed in Washington, D.C. Of particular interest in this posting is the reference letter sent by Allyn Young to the University of Chicago that is both glowing and explicit about his assistant’s handicap—“one of the chosen people”, i.e. a Jew.

________________________________________

From the AEA 1957 Handbook of Members

Marget, Arthur William, Bd. of Gov. Fed. Res. System, Washington 25, D.C. (1926 [began membership in AEA]) Bd. of Gov. of Fed. Res. System, dir., Div. of Int. Fin.; b. 1899; A.B., 1920, A.M., 1921, Ph.D., 1927, Harvard; 1920, Univ. of Cambridge; 1921, Univ. of London; 1921, Univ. of Berlin. Fields 7a [Money, Credit, and Banking: Monetary Theory and Policy], 9b [International Economics: Foreign Exchange, International Finance], 2c [History of Economic Thought]. Doc. dis. Loan fund: pecuniary approach to problem of determination of rate of interest. Pub. Theory of prices (Prentice-Hall, 1938, 1942); “Leon Walras and ‘Cash balance approach’ to problem of value of money,” J. P. E., 1931; “Monetary aspects of Schumpeterian system,” Rev. of Econ. and Statis., 1951. Dir. W. W. in Amer., Dir. of Amer. Schol.

 

Source: American Economic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4. Handbook of the American Economic Association (July, 1957), p. 189.

________________________________________

 

[ALLYN ABBOTT] YOUNG’S COMMENTS ON A. W. MARGET

[undated, Either 1926 or 1927. A typed copy of an excerpt from a letter by Young]

“The man who has been my assistant for the past three years is taking his degree this year. He has written a very brilliant thesis on “The Loan Fund: A Pecuniary Theory of Interest.” In erudition and cleverness he is as good as any man I have ever had, although I do not think he strikes as deeply in his thinking as the best of them. He graduated at the head of his class at Harvard, and was Phi Beta Kappa Marshal. Harvard sent him abroad on a traveling fellowship for a year, and he has been here for five subsequent years. He writes well and teaches well. All in all he is easily the best product we are turning out this year, and with the exception of James Angell he is as good as we have turned out in years. Now you will ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ His name is A. W. Marget and he is one of the chosen people. More than that he looks it. He is brilliant, loyal, and so good a teacher that he is quite popular among the Harvard undergraduates. The only thing that stands between him and success is his race. If you don’t fill your place next year, you might do worse than to take him on for a year’s trial.”

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics, Records. Box 38, Folder 1.

________________________________________

 

PRICE GREENLEAF AWARDS MADE
Fifty-Four Freshmen Received Benefits From Endowment Fund.

Fifty-four members of the Freshman Class have been awarded Price Greenleaf aid assignments for 1916-17. These awards represent part of an annual appropriation of $16,000 given to the University by the bequest of Ezekiel Price Greenleaf, of Quincy, who is also the founder of ten Price Greenleaf scholarships.

The income of the Price Greenleaf fund is distributed in sums from $100 to $250 a year, to undergraduates in the first year of their residence and to deserving students who have not succeeded in the competition for scholarships.

A subsequent award will be made in February to some other first year students of high standing. Following are those who have received the awards:

…Arthur William Marget…

 

Source: The Harvard Crimson, November 1, 1916.

________________________________________

ADMISSION EXAMINATION HONOR LIST ANNOUNCED
Boston Latin School Leads Number With Exeter Second and St. Paul’s and Newton Third.

The Committee on Admission has issued a list of the Freshmen whose entire entrance examination records have attained an average grade of work worthy of honorable mention. This is published in accordance with a vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, June 2, 1914, authorizing the Committee on Admission to publish each year after the September examinations, a list of those candidates for admission who passed this examination with high grades. This list also gives the names of the students’ schools and the titles of any scholarships they may have received. Boston Latin School leads this year with nine representatives on the list. Exeter is second with seven, and St. Paul’s School, of Concord, N. H., and Newton High School come next with four apiece….

… Arthur William Marget, Boston Latin, (Price Greenleaf Aid)…

 

Source: The Harvard Crimson, November 25, 1916.

________________________________________

Marget Elected Marshal of Scholars

Arthur William Marget 1G, of Roxbury, has been elected First Marshal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the University, an office which each year goes to the student ranking highest in his studies. Marget completed the College course in three years, graduated with the class of 1919, and is now attending the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Source: The Harvard Crimson, November 12, 1919.

________________________________________

 

Image Source: Arthur William Marget in Harvard Album 1928.

Categories
Bibliography Fields Suggested Reading

Industrial Organization, Myron Watkins’ Bibliographic Essay, 1927.

I stumbled across the following excellent bibliographic essay in preparing the previous posting for Dewing and Opie’s 1929 Harvard course, “Economics of Corporations”. The essay provides coverage of the American literature, as well as that of the English, German and French, on the subjects of trusts and cartels, the economic theory of monopoly and regulation and it appears reasonably complete  for its time.

I have not found all too much information about the author:

Myron Webster Watkins was born April 2, 1893 in Milford, Michigan and died in Stamford Connecticut December 4, 1979.

A.B. from the University of Michigan, 1914; Ph.D. from Cornell 1917. Faculty member at the University of Missouri (19??-1926), then professor of economics at New York University (1927-1946).

Some information found in Watkins’ New York Times obituary, December 6, 1979. See also: University of Michigan, Catalogue of Graduates, Non-Graduates, Officers, and Members of the Faculties 1837-1921. Ann Arbor: 1923. Page 210.

The leading economist in the deregulation of the airline industry under President Jimmy Carter, Alfred Kahn, was an assistant to the antitrust experts George W. Stocking and Myron W. Watkins during World War II. [Burton Ira Kaufman, The Carter Years, New York: Facts on File, 2006, p. 244].

________________________

Myron Webster Watkins. Industrial Combinations and Public Policy: A Study of Combination, Competition and the Common Welfare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927.

APPENDIX I
A GUIDE TO FURTHER STUDY

[pp. 297-314]

            The literature upon the broad problem of the organization of industry is too extensive to be brought under survey within the limits of this bibliographical note. But, attending simply to the material relating to the trust problem, so-called, the whole field may be conveniently divided into three sections. First, there is a mass of documentary and descriptive material reporting and analyzing actual experience with industrial concentration in different forms and in different spheres. In the second place, there is a considerable body of commentaries upon and criticisms of public policy toward the unified control of industry, including legal treatises and court decisions. Finally, there is the literature which deals with the theory of monopoly. These three divisions might be called the historical, the legal, and the economic literature relating to the trust problem. They do not, however, precisely correspond with the contributions of historians, lawyers, and economists, respectively. The major part of the more useful published material has been provided by economists — evidence that they are no longer a sect of theorists, cultivating in secluded cloisters a “dark and dismal science,” but have become a body of investigators of the practical administration of the business mechanism.

These three subdivisions of the field correspond, in the order given, to the aspects of the problem of industrial combination which appeal to students of different degrees of advancement. At once the most interesting and the most appropriate introduction to this branch of study is through the literature which sets forth, classifies, and interprets the actual phenomena which give rise both to political controversy and to economic speculation. Official publications of original source material, general in scope, are not numerous. Most comprehensive and exhaustive at the time of its first appearance, and still an illuminating collection of data of a type rarely made public authentically, is the Report of the United States Industrial Commission (Washington, in 18 volumes, 1900-01). The Commission, in investigating the general causes of social and industrial unrest, had occasion to call upon business leaders from every important branch of industry which had been affected by the consolidation movement to testify regarding the causes, specific circumstances, and effects of the formation of trusts. Most of this material appears in Volumes I, II, XIII and XVIII of the final report submitted to Congress. Comparable collections of source material are those describing the formation of cartels in Germany, and, more recently, the official survey of the industrial situation in Great Britain. In the report of an Imperial Commission of Inquiry appointed in 1902 (Kontradiktorische Verhandlungen über Deutsche Kartelle, 1903-06) and a survey subsequently made under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Denkschrift der Reichsregierung über das Kartellwesen, 1906-09) a number of copies of cartel agreements covering various branches of German industry are reproduced, together with the results of an investigation of their operation. The Report of the Committee on Trusts, of the Reconstruction Ministry, in England (Cd. 9236) London, 1919, evinces a complacent attitude toward the problem of industrial monopoly; but an intensive investigation of post-war trade conditions has subsequently been carried through under the direction of the Standing Committee on Prices and Trusts, a special subdivision of the Board of Trade. Sub-committees appointed for a great number of separate industries and groups of industries have, in their reports, brought to light a mass of information respecting the organization of British industry. No such comprehensive and official inquiry into the extent and character of industrial combination has been made in France.

Reports of more limited scope, setting forth the extent and character of market domination within specific industries, are more numerous. After the establishment of the Bureau of Corporations in 1903, a series of studies was published from time to time each of which treated of separate industries in which consolidations had been formed or control of the market attempted. The reports completed prior to the assumption by the Federal Trade Commission in 1915 of the functions of the Bureau include: the Report on the Beef Industry (1905); the Report on the Petroleum Industry, in three parts (1906,1907,1909); the Report on the Tobacco Industry, in three parts (1909, 1911, 1915); the Report on the Steel Industry, in three parts (1911, 1912, 1913); the Report on the International Harvester Company (1913); and the Report on the Lumber Industry, in four parts (1913,1914). This group of reports, while not entirely free from bias or even innuendo, represents the most exhaustive analysis of the causes and effects of industrial combination in specific spheres anywhere available. The method of procedure was both historical and statistical, and the data upon costs, prices, profits, and capital investment supply a wealth of material for analytical study which the Bureau itself only partially and, it must be added, imperfectly developed.

When the Federal Trade Commission succeeded the Bureau of Corporations as an investigating agency, it was also endowed with certain regulatory functions which seem to have impaired somewhat the performance of its research work. The reports of investigations conducted by the Commission during the first decade of its existence have, with minor exceptions, been fragmentary and of little more than ephemeral interest. There are, for example, a number of reports on costs of production in different industries made during the war or during the post-war boom to facilitate government price fixation or to frustrate “profiteering.” Among these may be mentioned the Report on the Book-Paper Industry (1917); the Report on the Baking Business (1917); the Report on Flour Milling and Jobbing (1918); revised (1920); the Report on Canned Foods (1918); the Report on the Leather and Shoe Industry, 1914-18 (1919); the Report on Copper (1919); the Report on Sugar Supply and Prices (1920); and the series of Coal Cost Reports (1920) dealing with conditions in different production districts. More pretentious investigations reported by the Commission are: the Report on the Meat Packing Industry, in five parts (1918); the Report on the Grain Trade, in five volumes (1920); and the Report on Household Furnishings Industries, in three volumes (1923, 1924). If the industries subject to these investigations were made the object of periodic inquiry the shortcomings of the method of “sampling” the current situation might be largely eliminated. It is possible that this course may eventually be consciously adopted, but at present the only illustrations of it appear to have come about casually, to wit, the Report on Pipe Line Transportation of Petroleum (1916); the Report on the Price of Gasoline in 1915 (1917); the Report on the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry (1921); and the Report on the Petroleum Industry in Wyoming (1921); the Report on the Fertilizer Industry (1916), ibid. (1923); and the Report on the Tobacco Industry (1921), followed by the Report on the Prices of Tobacco Products (1922). There are obvious positive advantages to commend the policy of recurrent inquiries into industrial and market conditions in the more prominent branches of trade.

Two recent reports by special government commissions may be noted as supplementary to this list of Federal Trade Commission Reports. The Report of the United States Coal Commission and the Hearings before the Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry, 67th Congress, 1st Session (volumes I, II, and III) (Washington, 1924), the latter assembling a mass of information on costs of different systems of market distribution, are similar in comprehensiveness to the investigations made by the Bureau of Corporations.

In the numerous unofficial studies of the growth of combinations in various industries the beginner will find some of the most absorbing chapters which the literature upon the trust movement affords. Collections of material covering several industries have been made by Ripley, W. Z., Trusts, Pools and Corporations (Boston, 1916); Dewing, A. S., Corporate Promotions and Reorganizations (Cambridge, 1914); and Stevens, W. H. S., Industrial Combinations and Trusts (New York, 1913). The latter is a compendium of original documents and other source material drawn mostly from court records. Less reliable, but utilizing a mass of information drawn from journalistic sources, is The Truth About the Trusts, by John Moody (New York, 1904). It is, of course, confined primarily to the circumstances surrounding the formation of the early combines, including the financial features of their promotion. Laying emphasis on deeper forces, but proceeding nevertheless on a faulty hypothesis, the late President C. R. Van Hise in Concentration and Control (New York, 1912), brought together a great body of data on the growth of large-scale operations in various industries, and endeavored to connect this tendency directly with the consolidation movement as exhibited in a number of branches of industry.

Similar descriptions of monopolistic organization in England may be found in Macrosty, J. W., The Trust Movement in British Industry (London, 1907), and in Rees, J. M., Trusts in British Industry (London, 1922). The latter work, which is not carefully done, is based almost entirely upon the series of reports on conditions in different industries prepared by the Standing Committees on Prices and Trusts of the Board of Trade, already alluded to. For the development of combinations in France no work of general scope is available, though interesting descriptions and comment upon certain pools and corners will be found in Rousiers, P. de, Les Syndicats Industriels de Producteurs (Paris, 1912), and in Dolleans, Edouard, De L’Accaparement (Paris, 1902). Neither of these is essentially a compendium of information, however. The former is in its way a classic. After recounting the development of the trust movement in the United States, Germany, and France, the author with true Latin clarity presents his general conclusions, which are not unfavorable to industrial concentration. In a subsequent survey and in a more journalistic manner, the broad problem of industrial concentration is treated by Payen, E., Les Monopoles (Paris, 1920). Incorporated in Part 2 is an instructive sketch of French state, or fiscal, monopolies. The best work upon the concentration of industrial organization in Belgium is by Georges de Leener, L’Organization Syndicale de Chefs d’Industrie (Brussels, 1911). In this scholarly treatise covering the entire trend of modern industrialism toward concentration, over half of the first volume is given to a description of the cartel organization in various Belgian industries. No inclusive review of German experience with industrial monopolies has ever been attempted, but there is available a current month to month account of the operations and policies of cartels in all branches of German industry which provides a fund of information incomparably superior to any secondary sources upon the combination movement in other countries. The Kartell-Rundschau has been published regularly since 1903 under the continuous editorship of Dr. Siegfried Tschierschky. It need hardly be explained that the publication is devoted to the interests of the cartels, from which it derives its chief support.

For the review of the general historical development of monopolistic forms of industrial organization the outstand ing work to consult is that of J. Strieder, Studien zur Geschichte kapitalistischer Organisationsformen (Leipzig, 1914). Hardly less authoritative, but less comprehensive, is the illuminating monograph by Herman Levy, Monopoly and Competition (London, 1911), tracing monopolistic tendencies in English industrial evolution from the sixteenth century, and pointing out in the final chapter some interesting parallels and contrasts between the experience of England and Germany and the United States. Monopolies Past and Present, by J. E. Le Rossignol (New York, 1901) covers much the same field.

Special studies in separate fields treating of American experience are by no means as numerous as the rich prospects revealed by occasional short articles in the economic journals might lead one to expect.1 However, they include the detailed narrative of the History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida M. Tarbell (1904); the more or less legalistic treatment, emphasizing financial aspects of the organization of The United States Steel Corporation, by Abraham Berglund (New York, 1907); and the judicious and scholarly work of Eliot R. Jones on The Anthracite Coal Combinations (Cambridge, 1914). Not primarily devoted to the study of the trusts within the given industries, but exhibiting clearly some of the causes and consequences of their formation, are: The Tin Plate Industry, by D. E. Dunbar (Boston, 1915); The Wool Industry, by P. T. Cherington (Chicago, 1916); and The American Wool Manufacture, Vol. II, by A. H. Cole (Cambridge, 1926). Without attempting to give a complete list of the intensive studies which have been made of the operations and policies of particular German cartels, we may indicate the wealth and range of this type of economic literature in Germany by reference to some of the more prominent studies of two or three important industries. The coal syndicates, the most conspicuous cartels in Germany, historically, have been the subject of much research as well as much controversy. Francis Walker’s Monopolistic Combinations in the German Coal Industry (New York, 1904) makes available in English a critical account of the early period, while W. Goetzke’s Das Rheinischwestfalische Kohlen Syndikate (Essen, 1904) covers the same ground from a more sympathetic angle. Under the same title Kurt Wiedenfeld (Bonn, 1912) published the results of a later study, which includes an account of the crucial controversy of 1910-11 over the question of “Imperial Participation,” or control, in this leading syndicate. The political controversy over the organization of the coal industry in 1911 was the forerunner of the warm debate during the war and the reconstruction period over the issue of nationalization of syndicated industries. Merely as casual examples of the mass of brochures on this subject which have helped to enliven the German political scene in recent years may be mentioned, Monopolfrage und Arbeiterklasse (4 essays), Wm. Jansson, editor (Berlin, 1917); and, on the opposite side, Für Reform der Industriekartelle (Berlin, 1920), and Das Problem der Staatlichen Kartellaufsichte (Mannheim, 1923), by Siegfried Tschierschky. How this sharpening of the issue and the inauguration of the new government policy of compulsory organization, or Zwangswirtschaft (for a few basic industries), have affected the cartells in the coal industry is shown in Die Zwangssyndikate in Kohlenbergbau, by Walter Thoenes (Jena, 1921). A recent addition to the list of scientific studies of the German coal cartels by an American author, A. H. Stockder, under the misleading title, German Trade Associations (New York, 1924), also reviews this later experience and analyzes the results of the new cartel policy. Special works of some merit treating of the experience with cartels in the potash industry, which was, so to speak, their original home, include: Die Deutsche Kaliindustrie und das Kalisyndikat, by Theodore Stoepel (Halle, 1904); Die Deutsche Kaliindustrie und das Kali Gesetze, by J. Schonemann (Hanover, 1911); Die Finanzierung das Kaliindustrie, by H. A. Giebel (Karlsruhe, 1912); and Das Kali, by Paul Kirche (Stuttgart, 1923). The latter work is partly technical. For the iron and steel industry, selection of but three or four outstanding studies from the considerable number which have appeared, without overlooking the historical significance of earlier researches, is even more difficult. The following, however, may be recommended for the present-day student, in preference to the largely superseded work of Mannstaedt and Zoellner: Beckman’s Der Zusammenschluss in der westdeutschen Grossindustrie (Cologne, 1921); H. Bruhn’s Der Eisenwirtschaftsbund (Jena, 1922); and A. Tross’s Der Aufbau der Eisen-und eisenverarbeitenden Industrie-Konzerne Deutschlands (Berlin, 1923). The latter contains a store of information on the present distribution of control in the industry.

The second main division of our classification of trust literature comprises, in addition to monographs of restricted compass surveying alternative public policies and the treatises still more limited in scope discussing current legal rules, a considerable number of textbooks providing a broad approach to, and usually a generalized “solution” of, the problem of industrial monopoly. To refer to the latter type of works first, it seems best to discuss them in the order of their relative emphasis upon the inductive or deductive method. Perhaps most noteworthy, because of its adherence to concrete facts and its empirical outlook, is J. W. Jenks’s The Trust Problem (New York, 1900). This standard text, after passing through a number of editions, was extensively revised in 1917 and published with W. E. Clark as co-author. It reflects throughout the exceptional opportunities for observation and statistical research of its original author, who was Secretary of the Industrial Commission. The digestive function here scarcely keeps pace with the foraging disposition, however. Business Organization and Combination, by Lewis H. Haney (New York, 1913), likewise is developed inductively, and the distinctive feature of the book is the attempt to connect the growth and special characteristics of monopolistic combinations with peculiarities of the corporate structure and the exigencies of corporation finance. The text by Eliot R. Jones under the title, The Trust Problem in the United States (New York, 1921), is the most comprehensive in scope, cautious in method, and sane in judgment of the general works in this field. Its prevailing conservatism is manifested not only in its substance, but in its form; none of the stock classifications, distinctions, or examples has been omitted. Besides intensive studies of six representative industrial combinations, there is an excellent survey in a short compass of the legal history of “the anti-trust movement.” For the reader who wishes an encyclopedic book of reference on the trust problem, either this text or that by Jenks and Clark should answer the purpose. A simple primer covering the more prominent aspects of the consolidation movement in America is J. F. Crowell’s Trusts and Competition (Chicago, 1915).

Two introductory studies of the trust movement in its initial stages, similar in general viewpoint and style, but different in respect of sharpness of perception and breadth of conception, are: Trusts, by E. L. Von Halle, (New York, 1895), and The Trusts and the Public, by George Gunton, (New York, 1899). These supply essentially journalistic descriptions of events and conditions surrounding the formation of trusts, and an explanation of their causes according to prevalent theories. Both were written from a strongly sympathetic point of view, the former primarily for foreign (German) consumption, the latter as a series of essays in apologetics. This “reporting” angle makes Von Halle’s book lucid and readable, while Gunton’s turn for anecdotes assured a wide audience for his articles. Neither possesses any permanent value as a contribution to the solution of the problem of industrial control. In the same category with these two volumes, except that it is developed from an opposite point of view is: The Plain Facts as to the Trusts and the Tariff, by G. L. Bolen (New York, 1902.)

The same verdict does not hold for E. S. Mead’s Trust Finance (New York, 1903), though it reflects a not unsympathetic attitude toward industrial combinations. The problem is interpreted almost exclusively in terms of the speculative evils of corporate promotion and capitalization. Data are assembled bearing upon fraud and chicanery in trust formation. Notwithstanding its one-sidedness, this text has its value in focusing attention on a sometimes neglected factor in the trust movement.

One of the earliest attempts at a circumspect analysis of the many phases of the monopoly problem is R. T. Ely’s Monopolies and Trusts (New York, 1900; ibid., 1906). In this pioneer work Professor Ely provided a sound background for more intensive studies of particular issues of social policy to which the growth of industrial monopolies has given rise. The historical perspective, the comparison and classification of different types of monopolistic organization, and the scientific method of approach distinguish this early classic. Of a not dissimilar stamp is J. B. Clark’s The Control of Trusts (New York, 1901), republished in 1912 with J. M. Clark as co-author. This excellent little text presents a closely reasoned analysis of the economic tendencies and legal situation responsible for the growth of trusts, and of the economic tendencies and legal reforms for which the growth of trusts is responsible. The clear statement of the limitations of competition, its advantages, and its necessary safeguards still bears critical examination, and for the reader who does not care for a more detailed treatment of the basic issues in public policy toward industrial organization this book should prove not only serviceable, but stimulating. A conservative, sane, and judicious book is E. D. Durand’s The Trust Problem (Cambridge, 1915).

For a concise and readable account of the socialist interpretation of the tendency toward industrial concentration, Herman Cahn’s Capital Today (New York, 1918) may be recommended. But the interested reader with two hours of spare time will not forego the opportunity to judge for himself the validity of the familiar predictions made by Karl Marx in Part VII of the first volume of his Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1885), American edition (Chicago, 1907), concerning the course of development of ever more inclusive forms of control in capitalistic industry.

Of foreign literature of the general type of the foregoing, it must suffice merely to mention a few outstanding works. The English contributions are meager, in any case. They include: D. H. MacGregor, Industrial Combination (London, 1906) (a deductive analysis, the abstract terms of which permit suggestive references and applications to trade unions and cooperative societies, as well as to different types of capitalistic groupings); G. R. Carter, Tendency Towards Industrial Combination (London, 1913) (a less scholarly but more pointed criticism of the consolidation movement); John Hilton, A Study of Trade Organizations and Combinations in the United Kingdom (London, 1919) (prepared for the Committee on Trusts of the Ministry of Reconstruction). Of the German treatises surveying and criticizing public policy toward industrial monopoly there must be mentioned before the many others Professor R. L. Liefmann’s Kartelle und Trusts (Stuttgart, 1910). This popular treatise has recently been revised and enlarged to cover post-war experience. It provides a useful classification of capitalistic unions, and an instructive analysis of the relation of the several forms to the special characteristics of different industries. In discussing the causes of the formation of capitalistic combinations and their consequences for the primary economic classes, stress is laid upon the tendencies to excess in free competition, on the one hand, and upon the efficacy of potential competition, on the other. This attitude is common among the majority of the German writers, and no doubt reflects in part the leniency of the established legal policy toward trade combinations. But the chief fault of the analysis is the failure to distinguish between the influence of prospective economies and of monopolistic opportunities in fostering industrial amalgamations. This failing, again, is shared by numerous German writers, who exhibit quite generally a certain disregard of the interests of consumers. Professor Liefmann’s article on Kartelle, in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 4th ed., Vol. V (Jena, 1923), provides a useful short survey of the subject, together with a fairly full bibliography of the German literature. Other significant German treatises, illustrating in varying degrees the characteristics that have just been noted are: H. Mannstaedt, Ursachen und Ziele des Zusammenschlusses in Gewerbe (Jena, 1916); von Beckerath, Kräfte, Ziele und Gestaltungen in der Deutschen Industriewirtschaft (Jena, 1921); and R. Isay, Studien im privaten und öffentlichen Kartellrecht (Mannheim, 1922). The latter is more than the mere legal treatise its title might suggest.

Less concerned with the formulation of an ultimately and abstractly sound policy, and treating more particularly of the scope, meaning, and significance of actual public policy are a number of critical works written from the legal point of view, but not intended exclusively for a professional audience. Foremost among the monographs of this type stands Bruce Wyman’s The Control of the Market (Boston, 1911). Here is the most instructive and suggestive treatment within two covers of the legal doctrines developed in the common law for the regulation of trade and industry. There is also a searching criticism of the course of judicial interpretation of the Sherman Act. Incisive in analysis, circumspect in judgment, charming in style, this is a classic which no discerning reader can lay down without a regret that its scope should not have been broader.

Even narrower in compass, as is indicated by its title, is ex-President (now Chief Justice) Taft’s The Anti-Trust Act and the Supreme Court (New York, 1914). This little book might almost be described as a tract, for it was written in defense of its author’s record in the enforcement of the Sherman Act, as well as of the policy which that Act embodies. But it evinces a ripe familiarity with every step in the evolution of federal regulation of trade relations, a process in which the author as a judge has borne a distinguished part, bringing to the interpretation of the law both erudition and insight.

Business Competition and the Law, by G. H. Montague (New York, 1917), has more of an instructive purpose, and is therefore less critical. This collected series of articles is little more than a handbook for use in steering business men clear of the meshes of the anti-trust laws. An earlier exposition of the legal doctrines which govern industrial organization and commercial methods, and one written with a better grasp of the significance of their historical origin and development is T. C. Spelling’s Trusts and Monopolies (Boston, 1893). But for a purely legal compendium the reader will do better to refer to W. W. Thornton’s A Treatise on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (Cincinnati, 1913), and to the encyclopaedic Trust Laws and Unfair Competition (United States Bureau of Corporations, Washington, 1916). Perhaps the most satisfactory treatment of the general law upon trade combinations, however, is A. M. Kales’s Contracts and Combinations in Restraint of Trade (Chicago, 1918). Here the traditional legal doctrines are expounded with rare force and insight.

More academic in tone than any of the foregoing, but exhibiting nevertheless a tenacious adherence to concreteness in method, is The Policy of the United States towards Industrial Monopoly, by O. W. Knauth (New York, 1914). The discussion of the development of the federal law upon trade regulation and the attitude of successive administrations toward its enforcement is characterized by sobriety of judgment and statement. The conflicts of opinion provoked by the anti-trust law and its interpretation are also carefully reviewed. The reader with a bent for historical inquiry will find an inviting problem presented respecting the origin of the Sherman Act, by a comparison of the Autobiography of George F. Hoar (New York, 1903), and the History of the Sherman Law, by A. H. Walker (New York, 1910).

The legal policies prevailing in foreign countries are so divergent that it is impracticable here to refer to works treating of the special features of each of these distinctive systems. One exception must be made, however. Not only because it has to do primarily with the legal principles governing industrial organization and trade relations in Australia, where the Government’s policy has been modeled on the American anti-trust policy, but also because of its own special qualities, mention must be made of W. Jethro Brown’s Prevention and Control of Monopoly (London, 1914). The author of this book is a distinguished jurist and an independent and clear-headed thinker. The book is an important contribution to the understanding of any anti-trust policy established upon common-law traditions.

In surveying the third principal division of the literature upon trusts or industrial monopolies, it is necessary to restrict attention to such works upon economic theory as deal primarily with the problem of monopoly. There is, of course, in most of the systematic treatises upon economic science some discussion of the nature and effects of monopoly. But as the antithesis of that perfect competition which is the foundation stone upon which the structure of classical economic theory has been reared, monopoly has, as a rule, come in for but scanty analysis in these texts. For example, in J. B. Clark’s The Distribution of Wealth (New York, 1900), there are but two casual references to monopoly, and one of these is in a footnote. Even Mill in the theoretical part of his Principles of Political Economy (5th edition, New York, 1894) devotes but a single page to the explanation of the determination of monopoly price and another page to the discussion of the influence of monopoly upon distribution. At best, in most of the well-known economics texts no more than one chapter is given to the treatment of monopoly problems, and that is usually limited to an exposition of the principle of monopoly value.

It is to the mathematical economists that one must go to collect the fragments of a comprehensive theory of value and distribution under monopolistic conditions.2 The mathematical method appears to lend itself readily to the analysis of market processes under the assumption of artificial manipulation. At any rate, the most significant contributions to this branch of economic theory have come from the mathematical school. The pioneer work of A. A. Cournot, Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses, first published in 1838 and translated for the “Economic Classics” series in 1897, remains an excellent introduction to the study of monopoly value. The employment of the methods of calculus brought a new technique into economic science, and by the device of superimposing demand and supply curves upon a single graph, Cournot opened the gateway to a fruitful field of scientific exploration. But he was not content with pointing the way, and except from the historical point of view these contributions are not what make the study of the Recherches most worth while to the present-day student.

Cournot employed his rigid mathematical methods in a lucid exposition of the effects of monopoly, under varying conditions as to costs, upon prices. He also analyzed, but not with so full a measure of success, the tendencies set up by partial monopoly, or limited competition,— an aspect of the general problem peculiarly significant for one interested in trusts and industrial combinations.3

Not all the mathematical economists have followed Cournot’s lead in setting out to construct a complete theory of value by proceeding from conditions of monopoly and working toward the purely competitive market by a gradual modification of hypotheses. The Lausanne school, so-called, developed the theory of exchanges, after the classical manner, under assumptions of free competition; but this approach has not prevented them from making some acute observations regarding the effects upon economic equilibria of monopolistic influences. Leon Walras, the founder of this group, in his Éléments d’Économie Politique Pure (Lausanne, 1889), developed the theory of general economic equilibrium. The study of monopoly has also been significantly advanced by Professor Pareto, the successor of Professor Walras, in his systematic treatises, Cours d’Économie politique (Lausanne, 1897), and Manuel d’Economie politique, (Paris, 1909). For a clear summary and a just appreciation of the contributions of the Lausanne school to economic theory, one should consult E. Antonelli, Principes d’Économie pure (Paris, 1914). A more critical review of the work of this school, as well as of the mathematical method in economics in general, will be found in W. E. Zawadski, Les Mathématiques appliquées à l’Économie politique (Paris, 1914). Outside of the Lausanne school, which is more than half French itself, the leading French representative of the mathematical method has been Professor E. Colson, and his comprehensive Cours d’Économie politique, in six volumes (Paris, 1901-07), will be found to contain some of the most precise and ingenious demonstrations of the consequences of monopolistic price-making under varying conditions. In particular Volume I, pp. 141-201, and Volume VI, pp. 11- 54, may be recommended.

Probably, however, the most searching analyses of the problems surrounding monopolistic price determination, including its relation to wealth distribution and social welfare, in the last two generations have been made by English mathematical economists. The work of two of the three most prominent of these contributors to an economic theory of monopoly is well summed up in their books, but the contributions of the third found expression almost exclusively in journal articles. Professor Edgeworth’s prefatory Mathematical Physics (London, 1881) called attention to the interesting possibilities in an economic analysis of the operation of combinations in various spheres: the determinateness of the transactions in which they participated, the significance of the reduction in the number of exchange relationships, and the advantages and limitations of concert of action in the market. These questions and similar ones have been minutely examined in subsequent writings, more especially with reference to ordinary commercial transactions in a series of three articles on La Teoria Pura del Monopolio in the Giornali degli Economisti, 1897 (Volume XV, 2d Series, pp. 13, 307, 405), and with reference to the particular case of diminishing cost industries and the attendant power of discrimination, in Contributions to the Theory of Railway Rates, four articles in the Economic Journal (1911-13, Volume XXI, p. 346, p. 55; Volume XXII, p. 198; Volume XXIII, p. 206). It is fortunate that these and other scattered papers of Professor Edgeworth have now been brought together and the articles on the “Pure Theory of Monopoly” retranslated into English. In his complete economic writings, Papers Relating to Political Economy (London, 1925), the articles referred to above will be found, respectively, in Volume I, pp. 111-42, and in the same volume, pp. 61-99 and pp. 172- 91.

The second of the triumvirate referred to has accomplished, better perhaps than any of the other mathematical economists, the difficult task of interpreting clearly and untechnically the results and significance of analyses that necessarily involved types of reasoning that are essentially mathematical. Alfred Marshall, in his Principles of Economics (8th edition, New York, 1920), has done far more than to interpret the contributions of other minds, however, and not less than elsewhere in the sections dealing with monopoly and its incidents. The fifth Book of his Principles, Chapters 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14, cannot be overlooked by any student desiring the minimum essentials of an acquaintance with the literature of trusts and monopolies. The scrupulous faithfulness of the late dean of English-speaking economists in adhering to the rigid premises of his argument when treating of the theoretical implications of monopoly, no less than in other parts of his work, combined with his extraordinary grasp of the limitations of those premises and their relation to the complexities of actual affairs, enabled him to penetrate many obscure compartments and fissures in the economic structure without losing his way. And the reader, if he watches all the sign-posts, can follow him without difficulty. In particular, Marshall explains the relation of various cost tendencies to the development of monopoly, and studies the effects upon the general welfare of the operation of monopoly under varying conditions, natural and imposed.

Finally, the successor of Professor Marshall, both academically and professionally, Professor A. C. Pigou, has given us, in The Economics of Welfare (2d ed., London, 1924), the best all-around account anywhere obtainable of the economic significance of monopoly and of the feasibility of the different means of its regulation in the public interest. The present writer’s indebtedness to this source and to Professor Pigou’s previous volume, Wealth and Welfare (London, 1912), which may be taken as a preliminary edition of The Economics of Welfare, is so patent in the sixth chapter of this monograph that it will not need more than formal acknowledgment here. The relationship is cited here mainly that the reader may gauge better the importance attached to Professor Pigou’s notable achievements in this branch of economic theory.

A compact but rather difficult mathematical summary of some of the more important results reached by Edgeworth, Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, and others is given by Professor A. L. Bowley in his Mathematical Groundwork of Economics (Oxford, 1924).

The contributions of American economists in this difficult field of economic analysis have not been especially conspicuous. For a cautious but very elementary treatment of the problem of monopoly value, the student will find helpful the exposition of the authors of Outlines of Economics, R. T. Ely and associates (New York, revised edition, 1920).

At the moment of going to press, there has just appeared an important series of monographs on cartels and combines, prepared under the direction of the Economic and Financial Section of the League of Nations (Geneva, 1927) for submission to the International Economic Conference of May, 1927. Only the briefest mention of these documents is possible in the circumstances. The one presenting the most acute analysis and the most realistic interpretation of the movement toward comprehensive industrial control is Professor Kurt Wiedenfeld’s Cartels and Combines. A healthy skepticism is evinced by Professor D. H. MacGregor in his very brief treatment of International Cartels. Professor Gustav Cassel takes advantage of the opportunity in a tract upon Recent Monopolistic Tendencies in Industry and Trade, not only to point out the similarities between trade unions and business confederations and amalgamations, but also to exhibit a personal bias, as it appears, by magnifying the economic evils set in train by the former and minimizing even the potentialities of abuse in the latter. The thesis taken by Professor Paul de Rousiers in his Cartels and Trusts and Their Development is that “Industrial agreements between producers are the outcome of economic necessity, bound up with existing conditions of production and distribution.” But as the author does not himself maintain this standpoint throughout the essay, his readers are not likely to be convinced. Still less convincing are a number of the other papers in which logic has been thrown overboard altogether and dissimulation given the job of pilot. These need not be cited. It is enough to note that under the euphemistic slogan of “Economic Rationalization,” which to some means a prudent direction of affairs and to others rationing, or plain division of the spoils, a movement is under way in Europe to smooth the way for supernational industrial control. In some cases this might mean the extension of monopolistic influences over wider spheres, but more frequently probably only the entrenchment of existing privileges within particular national spheres. Several of the documents under review appear to have been designed to lend impetus to this movement.

Notes

1 Vide, on the paper industry, articles by H.R. Hess, 25 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 650 (1911), E. O. Merchant, 32 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 238 (1918), and 34 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 313 (1920), Constance Southworth, 30 Journal of Political Economy, 681 (1922); on the gunpowder industry, an article by W. H. S. Stevens, 26 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 444 (1912); on the iron and steel industry, articles by E. S. Mead, 22 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 452 (1908); A. Berglund, 38 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1, and 607 (1923-24); on the woolen industry, articles by L. D. H. Weld, 27 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 67 (1912), A. H. Cole, 37 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 436 (1923); and on the shoe machinery industry, articles by R. Roe, 21 Journal of Political Economy, 938 (1913), and 22 Journal of Political Economy, 43 (1914).

2 This phrase is used hero and elsewhere to comprehend conditions of quasi-monopoly as well as monopoly in the strict sense.

3 While the mathematical method does not appear, in general, to have made strong appeal to German economists, this particular aspect of the problem of monopoly has been further developed by Karl Forchheimer in an article in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, vol. xxxii, p. 1, “Theoretisches zum unvollständigen Monopole.”

 

Image Source: National Archives and Records Administration. United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. World War II Draft Cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Maryland. State Headquarters ca. 1942. NARA Publication: M1939. NAI: 563727. The National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri. U.S.A.

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Courses Economists Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Economics of Corporations. Dewing and Opie, 1929

 

Professor Arthur Stone Dewing (1880-1971) and Dr. Redvers Opie taught the course Economics of Corporations at Harvard that was given in the second semester of the academic year 1928/29.  In an earlier posting I transcribed a student review of the course that was published in the Harvard Crimson (December 11, 1929).

Dewing was born (April 16, 1880) and died (January 19, 1971) in Boston. His academic degrees were awarded by Harvard (A.B., 1902; A.M., 1903; Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1905). Dissertation title: “Negation and Intuition in the Philosophy of Schelling.” He also studied at the University of Munich. Dewing taught philosophy from 1902 to 1913 and in economics and finance from 1911 to 1933.  He was one of the founders of the Harvard Business School. For a memorial see Cornelius Vermeil, “Arthur Stone Dewing”, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 83, 1971, pp. 165-167.

Incidentally Arthur S. Dewing was a distinguished numismatist, his collection of nearly three thousand ancient Greek coins was considered “one of the most outstanding in the hands of a private collector in the world.” Here a fascinating article about the theft and recovery of much the Dewing collection.

Redvers Opie (1900-1984) was a Harvard economics Ph.D., best known as the translator of Joseph Schumpeter’s The Theory of Economic Development (1934). From the “Company Info” page of Ecanal (Economic Analysis for Company Planning in Mexico) with information added by me regarding the dates of Opie’s academic degrees:

Ecanal was founded in 1976 by the British economist, Dr Redvers Opie, who was educated at Durham University [B. Com., 1919]. He taught at Oxford University and became the Bursar of Magdalen College. Later on he received a PhD from and taught at Harvard University [A.M. in 1927. Ph.D. in 1928. Thesis: “John Stuart Mill: a Reexamination”]. On the recommendation of John Maynard Keynes, he became the UK Treasury representative in Washington DC, and later on one of the five members of the UK delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference, which gave birth to the IMF and the World Bank. He started Ecanal upon becoming a naturalized Mexican as the source of critical analysis of the economy and government policy useful for business.

Cf. the 1933-34 Additional Readings for General Examination Corporations for Harvard.

Note: In the Course Announcements for 1928-29 (second edition), p. 122, Dr. C. E. Persons was originally scheduled to teach this course.

The information for this course comes from the course notes taken by later University of Chicago and Columbia University economist, Albert Gailord Hart. Hart’s handwriting defies encryption though I am proud to say that all but two or three words in what follows has been successfully deciphered. The course reading assignments are followed by the final examination questions.

__________________________________

Economics 4b
Assignments

Buy Jones—Trust Problem

[Jones, Eliot. The Trust Problem in the Unites States. New York: Macmillan, 1929. For the 1921 edition]

Choose one[:]

Pollock & Maitland—Law – Vol. I 586-518

[Pollock, Sir Frederick and Frederic William Maitland. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed. Cambridge (England): Cambridge University Press, 1923.]

[Illegible name, “Bold—-“?] 1st ed 362-376 [;] 3rd ed 469-490

J. P. Davis Corp. 1, 7 (2 & 8 optional)

[Davis, John P. Corporations; A Study of the Origin and Development of Great Business Combinations and of their Relation to the Authority of the State. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905. Volume I, probably Chapter I (Introduction, pp. 1-12) and Chapter II (The Nature of Corporations, pp.13-34) intended; Volume II, probably Chapter VII (Legal View of Corporations, pp. 209-247) and Chapter VIII (Modern Corporations, pp. 248-280) intended]

Baldwin Mod Pol Inst

[Baldwin, Simeon Eben. Modern Political Institutions. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1898]

Buy one[:]

Dewing A. S. Cor. Finance (simplified) omit 8, 17-19, 21

[Dewing, Arthur Stone. Corporation Finance. New York: Ronald Press, 1922]

Lyon, Hastings—[Cor. Finance] (specialized) omit I 6,8, II 4

[Lyon, Hastings, Corporation Finance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916
Part I: Capitalization. Part II: Distributing Securities, Reorganization.]

Hour exam in mid-March, another early April

Jones 1-5, 9, 11-2, 14-6

Watkins Indust Combin & Pub. Pol. 11 (R 223-47)
Not held for cases except big ones.

[Watkins, Myron Webster. Industrial Combinations and Public Policy: A Study of Combination, Competition and the Common Welfare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927.

Jones 17-18

Take one.

1 Indust Conf Bd “Trade Associations”

[National Industrial Conference Board, Trade Associations; Their Economic Significance and Legal Status, 1925.  Reviewed in Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 35, No. 3, June, 1927. pp. 428-30.]

2 [Indust. Conf. Bd.] “Public Reg. of Competitive Practices”

[(Myron W. Watkins), National Industrial Conference Board, Public Regulation of Competitive Practices, 1925. Revised and enlarged edition, 1929. Third edition, 1940.]

3 [Illegible word] the Law plus Watkins

4 Kirsch—“Trade Ass’ns.

[Kirsch, Benjamin S. Trade Associations: The Legal Aspects. New York: Central Book Co., 1928. Review in Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 38, No. 2 (April, 1930), pp. 238-240.]

Ad lit. A. Smith V, ch. I, Pt III, article I, 211-245.

Geneva Economic Conference of 1927. Publications on Cartels.

[Paul de Rousiers, Cartels, Trusts, and Their Development; D. H. MacGregor, International Cartels. Geneva, 1927]

 

Source: Albert Gailord Hart Papers. Box 60, Folder “R Opie 1929 Monopoly etc”.

__________________________________

 

1928-29
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4b

PART I

(About one hour)

Write an essay on one of the following topics:

(a) Public Policy and Business Standards.
(b) Trade Association Activities and the Competitive System.
(c) The Rule of Reason.
(d) Government Control of Combination and Consolidation To-day.

 

PART II

Answer not more than FOUR questions.

  1. What significance has a study of “laws of return” for an understanding of the problems connected with industrial combinations?
  2. “Certainly the implication of the Webb Act is that enforced competition is too weak, too inefficient to meet monopolistic combination. The question may be fairly asked, what does this admission entail in regard to our domestic trust policy?” Defend, refute or modify.
  3. Does the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission reflect any changes in the relation of Government to industry? What have been the most important activities of the Commission since its inception?
  4. What are the chief causes and purposes of corporate reorganization? Describe the usual procedure adopted, paying particular attention to the methods of protecting the interests of the various parties involved.
  5. “The trust dissolutions have not resulted in a spectacular and instant rescue of the consumer from the evils of monopoly, but that was hardly to have been expected.”
    Do you agree?
    What has been accomplished by trust dissolutions?
  6. “The stockholder has a right to receive the earnings of the corporation as dividends; and the existence of a large surplus simply shows that the stockholder has been deprived of his rightful income.” Does this indicate an intelligent understanding of corporate surplus?

Final. 1929.

 

Source: Albert Gailord Hart Papers. Box 60, Folder “Exams: CHI Qualifyin[?]”.

Image Source: (Dewing, left) Harvard Album 1925; (Opie, right) Harvard Album 1932.

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Wholesale Price Indexes. Wesley Clair Mitchell, 1921.

I’m an index number junkie. But this blog is not about me, though it will from time to time reveal my preferences, the perogative of the blogmeister.

The kind folks at FRASER provide us really great material. Here the link to Index Numbers of Wholesale Prices in the United States and Foreign Countries : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 284, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, October 1921. Chart 1 between pages 14 and 15 is to die for!

Aggregation is the game, and Mitchell was his name, Wesley Clair Mitchell.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Government Regulation of Industry. A.B. Correlation Examination, 1939

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “correlation examination” questions for government regulation of industry given at Harvard in May 1939.  

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[SourceHarvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

  • Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates.

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

______________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

 

______________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

CORRELATION EXAMINATION
Government Regulation of Industry

(Three hours)

Answer either FOUR or FIVE questions, including TWO from each group. If you answer FOUR questions, write about an hour on ONE of them and mark your answer “Essay.” This question will be given double weight.

A
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part

  1. Discuss (a) the political and (b) the economic problems that must be met if cyclical fluctuations are to be moderated by a great public works program.
  2. “Despite popular misconceptions the courts have failed to nullify the antitrust laws.”
  3. “The trouble with the large corporation is not its size nor any lack of efficiency but rather its lack of social responsibility.” Is there any way short of out-right government ownership for meeting this problem?
  4. “The existence of cartels vastly facilitated the penetration of political power into the economic sphere in the Fascist countries.”
  5. “The foremost mandate to those who wish to avoid the expansion of public ownership and operation, is to bring about the adoption of a rational method for determining base values of public utilities for regulatory purposes.”
  6. “Although the mixed undertaking has points in common with the public corporation such as its corporate form and monopolistic position, the two organizations are strikingly different.”
  7. “At present the United States does not have a democratically administered radio. The present system is subject to the pressure of groups interested in economic advantage. Are the evils of a private-profit radio greater than those of a nationalistic radio?”
  8. “The fiscal system cannot serve as an engine of social control unless it is very materially redesigned and remodeled. It can become a means of social control only by becoming itself the object of control.”
  9. “The public utility problem, in whatever form it is found, is primarily a question of distributing controls. The locus of ownership is merely an incidental aspect of the whole problem.”

 

B
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part

  1. “Perhaps the most acute of our present problems is that of preserving the democratic control of an increasingly centralized government power over economic life, rather than the avoidance of further extension of centralized government control.”
  2. Compare briefly commission regulation and government competition (as alternative methods of controlling market results) with respect to their most important political, administrative, and economic aspects.
  3. “The experience of the last ten years in ‘solving’ the farm problem leads to one conclusion only—that it can never be solved by government.”
  4. “Experience since 1920 demonstrates that the only way we can get desirable consolidation of railroads, which would yield great economies, is to allow the carriers to consolidate as they wish free from legal restrictions.”
  5. Discuss the administrative tasks and methods of the National Labor Relations Board.
  6. “Many of the bad effects of monopoly could be eliminated simply by amending the antitrust laws to prohibit the practices of price leadership and sharing the market.”
  7. “If price fixing according to the criterion laid down in the National Bituminous Coal Act of 1937 were extended to a large number of major industries wages and profits would be higher all ‘round.”
  8. Discuss some of the economic and administrative problems presented by the Robinson-Patman Act.
  9. Explain why you would favor or oppose the establishment of a Bureau of Industrial Economics to collect and publish basic industrial statistics and engage in continuous study of the problems of industrial organization and business policies.

May 12, 1939.

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Lloyd Appleton Metzler Papers. Box 7. [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics. Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.

 

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Public Administration and Finance, Correlation Exam, 1939

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “correlation examination” questions for public administration and finance given at Harvard in May 1939.

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[SourceHarvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

  • Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates.

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

______________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

 

 

______________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

CORRELATION EXAMINATION
Public Administration and Finance

(Three hours)

Answer either FOUR or FIVE questions, including TWO from each group. If you answer FOUR questions, write about an hour on ONE of them and mark your answer “Essay.” This question will be given double weight.

 

A
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part

  1. “A marked tendency of modern legislation is to deal with regulatory problems by setting forth less frequently in the legislation itself the particular rules that shall control. More commonly the administrative agency is given power to prescribe governing regulations in certain spheres of activity.”
  2. “One factor that has received little attention is the need for administrative agencies to give adequate and effective publicity to their achievements. In the field of policy determination, effective publicizing of the policy and of the reasons that underlie it is essential.”
  3. “Although the U. S. Civil Service Commission has accomplished much in the way of reducing the patronage evil and in introducing competition as a means of recognizing merit, the full implications of the merit system have not been realized.”
  4. “The ultimate test of an administrative agency regulating business is the policy that it formulates; not the fairness as between the parties of the disposition of a controversy on a record of their own making.”
  5. “The development of American administrative law involves a potential conflict between the legislature and the judiciary. In humble realization by each of their respective functions lies in large measure the trembling hope for the maintenance of our democracy.”
  6. “A serious charge against the grant-in-aid from the point of view of concern for our dual system, is that it breaks down state initiative and devitalizes state policies. The exact contrary appears to be the case in actual practice.”
  7. “An old, established rule of statecraft is that ad hoc agencies should be kept at a minimum. Every agency that wants to be free from the integrated structure of the government and the control of central staff agencies must be able to make out a case for itself, showing that the advantages considerably outweigh the disadvantages.”
  8. “The concept of efficiency can be made the basis of a comprehensive and flexible framework for the evaluation and appraisal of government. It is a powerful tool for analyzing relationships of legislature and administrator.”
  9. “In the lack of cooperation between the President and Congress, is to be found the most serious weakness in the national fiscal system.” Discuss with reference to the Bureau of the Budget and the Treasury Department as agencies for financial planning, accounting and control.

 

B
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part

  1. “You cannot run a war without inflation, so the government must finance it by borrowing or issuing paper money instead of by increasing taxation.”
  2. Explain the purposes and the principal activities of the Farm Credit Administration, or the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
  3. “People who talk about the ‘burden’ of the public debt fail to see that it is simply a matter of taxing Peter to pay Paul, or sometimes Peter.”
  4. Discuss the more important financial, administrative, and political problems which would be involved in a government program for extensive slum clearance.
  5. “Few people seem to realize that the Tennessee Valley Authority is socialism, and socialism of the worst sort characterized by fairyland economics, academic ideology, and absentee control.”
  6. “The chief result of the pernicious system of federal grants to states is that the people of those states with the smartest politicians get part of the bills for their own schools and highways paid by people in other states.”
  7. Discuss the possibilities of achieving a reduction in the costs of federal government or state government without diminishing the output of government services.
  8. “Our tax system needs to be revised in such ways as to discourage saving and encourage investment.”
  9. “The unplanned character of public spending by state and local governments must bear a considerable part of the blame for fluctuations in employment and the national income.”

 

May 12, 1939.

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Lloyd Appleton Metzler Papers. Box 7. [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics. Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.

 

Categories
Business School Chicago Economists

Chicago. Problem of Faculty Turnover, 1923

The Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago Library is putting scans of records from the respective administrations of Presidents Harper, Judson and Burton (1869-1925)  on-line (52 boxes of 91 boxes thus far!).  For today’s posting I have transcribed the introduction and conclusions of a summary “of the most imperative needs of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature” written in October 1923 as well as the section for the Department of Political Economy. Additionally I provide c.v. data for the economists named published in the Annual Register 1921-22 for the University of Chicago and additional biographical information (obituaries/memorials) to follow their post-Chicago careers.

 

____________________________________

The University of Chicago
The Graduate School of Arts and Literature

Office of the Dean

October 30, 1923.

Dean J. H. Tufts,
The University of Chicago.

Dear Dean Tufts:

I enclose a summary of the most imperative needs of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature. I have drawn it up only after a most careful examination of the condition of the Departments. I am convinced that it is only by making the new appointments which I have listed and providing the increases I have indicated that the School can hope to make any appreciable contribution to graduate studies in America or even to hold its own with the other Graduate Schools in the country. In the case of some departments the situation is almost inconceivably bad. It is so bad that it is only by making new appointments of strong men—major appointments that would command attention—and by increasing the salaries of many members of the teaching staff who are being tempted away that we can hope to regain our prestige. I hope that this will not sound like an exaggeration. It is not. It is a lamentable fact that some of the departments that ten or fifteen years ago were famous and attracted graduate students from all parts of the continent are now deplorably weak, while some of the others, though still doing efficient work, have recently suffered serious losses in their teaching staff and are threatened with still more. Let me speak of these in detail.

 

I. The Weak Departments:

  1. The Department of Psychology
  2. The Department of the History of Art
  3. The Department of German….
  4. The Department of Latin
  5. Another notable example of weakness is found in Anthropology
  6. The Department of General Literature

 

[II.] The Other Departments:

  1. Romance Languages
  2. History
  3. Political Economy

The situation here is especially precarious. The instructional staff is an efficient one but extremely difficult to hold. Within recent years three men have gone: Moulton, Hardy and Lyon. Some of the men here now have received tempting offers of positions wither in government bureaus or in industries. The new appointment in Money and Banking is to fill the vacancy caused by Moulton’s going to Washington two years ago. Viner has had more than one call. Good men in Political Economy seem to be increasingly hard to get.

May I remind you also of the fine contribution that this Department, under Mr. Marshall’s inspiration, has made to that cooperative study of economic, social, and political conditions in Chicago that is being carried on by all the departments in the Social Science Group. This whole piece of work is, as you yourself know, a most interesting experiment, and in its detailed analysis of the characteristics of the Chicago community, will in all probability prove to be a model for the study of any large metropolitan area.

I hope you will pardon my writing at such length, but the situation seems to me to be critical. We cannot afford to delay remedial measures. The money that I am asking for is not simply for the University of Chicago, it is for Graduate Studies in the whole Middle West, which looks to Chicago for its teachers. Of all the new appointments that I have urged there is not one that would not influence higher education throughout the Mississippi Valley.

 

Yours very truly,

[signed]
Gordon J. Laing

 

Source: University of Chicago. Office of the President: Harper, Judson and Burton Administrations Records 1869-1925. Box 47, Folder 6 “Graduate schools, development, 1914-1924”.

 

____________________________________

 

Charles Oscar Hardy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Financial Organization in the School of Commerce and Administration. [Resigned]

A.B., Ottawa University, 1904; Professor of History and Economics, ibid., 1910-18; Dean of the College, ibid., 1916-18; Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1916; Lecturer in the School of Commerce and Administration, ibid., 1918-19; Assistant Professor, ibid., 1919-22.

 

Harold Glenn Moulton, Ph.B., Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy. [Resigned]

Ph.B., University of Chicago, 1907; Assistant in Political Economy, ibid., 1910-11; Instructor, ibid., 1911-14; Ph.D., ibid., 1914; Assistant Professor, ibid., 1914-18; Associate Professor, ibid., 1918-1922; Professor, ibid., 1922.

 

Leverett Samuel Lyon, A.M., LL.B., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Commercial Organization in the School of Commerce and Administration.

Ph.B., University of Chicago, 1910; LL.B., Chicago Kent College of Law, 1915; Assistant in Commercial Organization in the School of Commerce and Administration, ibid., 1916-17; Instructor, ibid., 1917-19; A.M., ibid., 1918; Assistant Professor, ibid., 1919—; Ph.D., ibid., 1921.

 

Jacob Viner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Political Economy.

B.A., McGill University, 1914; A.M., Harvard University, 1915; Instructor in Political Economy, University of Chicago, 1916-19; Assistant Professor, ibid., 1919—; Ph.D., Harvard University, 1922.

 

Leon Carroll Marshall, A.M., LL.D., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Economy; Dean of the School of Commerce and Administration and of the Graduate School of Social Service Administration.

A.B., Ohio Wesleyan University, 1900; A.B., Harvard University, 1901; A.M., ibid., 1902; Assistant, ibid., 1902-3; Professor of Economics, Ohio Wesleyan University, 1903-7; Assistant Professor of Political Economy, University of Chicago, 1907-8; Associate Professor, ibid., 1908-11; Dean of the School of Commerce and Administration, ibid., 1909—; Professor of Political Economy, ibid., 1911—; Dean of the Senior Colleges, ibid., 1911-20; LL.D., Ohio Wesleyan University, 1918; Dean of the Graduate School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, 1920—.

 

 

Source: University of Chicago, Annual Register, 1921-1922, pp. 38, 40, 54, 57.

 

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Life after the University of Chicago

“In Memoriam: Charles Oscar Hardy, 1884-1948”. American Economic Review, Vol. 39, No. 3 (May, 1949), pp. 478-480.

Harold Moulton, Economist, Dead. Ex-President of Brookings Institution in the Capital,” The New York Times, December 15, 1965, p. 48.

Engle, N. H., Leverett Samuel Lyon, Journal of Marketing, Vol 24, No. 1 (July, 1959), pp. 67-69.

“Dr. Jacob Viner, Economist, Dead: Princeton Professor was U.S. Adviser 4 Decades,” The New York Times, September 13, 1970.

Marshall, Leon Carroll, 1879-1966. Biographical notes. Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC). [Webpage].

 

Image Source: Leon C. Marshall. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-04113, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Chicago Fields

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. program, switch to field exams. 1919.

The brief memo transcribed for today’s posting indicates at least a desire and perhaps indeed first steps to moving graduate education in economics at the University of Chicago away from a course credit orientation (i.e. “majors”) to one based upon examination in aggregates of “fields or subjects”. The memo’s author, James Alfred Field, taught courses on population and vital statistics.

_________________________________

James Alfred Field (1880-1927).

A.B., Harvard (1903); graduate student, Harvard (1903-6); University of Berlin, 1905-06; Assistant/Teaching Fellow in Economics, Harvard (1903-5); Instructor in Economics Harvard/Radcliffe (1906-08).

Instructor 1908-10, Assistant Professor (1910-13), Associate Professor (1913-1918), Professor (1918-1927) at University of Chicago.

Source: University of Chicago. Annual Register, 1909-1910 .p. 45.

_________________________________

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration

Memorandum to Graduate Committee from J. A. Field

December 8, 1919

The Committee on Graduate Students in the Department of Political Economy will meet on Thursday, December 11, at 4:00 o’clock, in Cobb 6 B, to begin the discussion of proposed reforms in the methods of graduate instruction and in the requirements and examinations for the doctor’s degree.

It is proposed, in general, that advanced students who have shown evidence of their qualification be exempted, as far as is practicable, from the routine demands of separate courses, and be assisted and encouraged to organize their studies in significant groups or special fields, with increased opportunities for independent reading and inquiry. Accordingly, it is suggested that the requirements for the doctor’s degree be formulated in terms not of majors, but of fields or subjects, and that the method of examination be correspondingly revised.

The discussion on December 11 will deal particularly with the practical problems of defining suitable fields or groups of studies, and of guiding and testing independent individual work in these fields.

 

J. A. Field

 

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records. Box 22, Folder 7.

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-06081, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

 

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Sociology and Political Economy. Laughlin Letter, 1894

In a handwritten letter to President William R. Harper, the head of the Department of Political Economy, Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, responds to a request for harmonizing the course offerings between his department and those of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology headed by (Sociology) Professor Albion W. Small.

Laughlin signals his interest in establishing mutually recognized borders between the disciplines and he appears to hint that because Professor Small believes “Social Science” (by which the Department of Sociology/Anthropology is apparently meant) is “the dome built on the pillars” of ethics, political science, jurisprudence, history and political economy, Small’s department imperially claims curricular turf in the named disciplines.

Laughlin wants to reassure Harper that reports that had apparently filtered to the university administration of personal animosity between Small and Laughlin have no real foundation but he remains firm about the principle of rendering to the department of political economy what is due political economy.

_______________________

Newman, N. Y.,
July 17, 1894

My dear Pres. Harper,

I have your letter of the 10th inst. [instante mense] in which you say: “I hope that it will be possible for you and Mr. Small to arrange the work of the departments in such a manner as that (1) there shall be no duplication, and (2) the courses may fit into each other to the best possible advantage”.

I think you will find both Mr. Small [Albion Woodbury Small, Head Professor of Sociology] and myself quite ready to do anything we can to save the University from any criticism. Both of us, however, will probably be struck by the lack of point in what has been said. I do not quite see what is meant by “harmony of work between the two departments”, as opposed to what now exists. As I understand Mr. Small, Social Science takes its data from the existing sciences, of which Political Economy is only one, the others being Philosophy (or Ethics), Political Science, Jurisprudence, and History. Social Science is the dome built on the pillars of all these sciences. The relations of Political Economy to Social Science are not other than the relations of Political Science, or Philosophy, or History—and there is no reason for singling out Political Economy. I can see, of course, that students of Social Science should have their Political Economy before they enter Social Science—under the above relations, and I have noticed that few students in Social Science are also taking Political Economy. But this probably quite as true of Social Science and Political Science.

I am speaking, of course, not of the sub-divisions of Anthropology, or Sanitary Science. They are not in question. And as to the study of dependent classes (Dr. Henderson’s [Charles Richmond Henderson, Associate Professor of Sociology in the Divinity School and University Chaplain] work) much of it is independent of economic data. So I have spoken only of Mr. Small’s work.

If there has been any discourtesy as to personal work, I shall do my best to stop it. But if any discussion exists relating to scientific work, independent of persons, such as that of the relations of the sciences, I believe it to be healthy, and I should welcome it so far as it relates to Political Economy. The proper University spirit demands it. And it is also to be remembered that the University of Chicago is the only institution in the world—so far as my knowledge goes—in which a division is made into Political Economy, Political Science, History, Social Science, and Ethics; and there must naturally be some questions arise [sic] to boundaries.

So far as reduplication goes the only case I know of is a course by Mr. Cummings [John Cummings, Reader in Political Economy; A.B. (1891), A. M. (1892), Harvard; University of Chicago (1894), Ph.D.] on the Utopias (similar to one by Mr. Thomas [William I. Thomas, Instructor in Ethnic Psychology; A.B. (1884), A.M. (1885), Ph.D. (1886) University of Tennessee]). I was ignorant of Mr. Thomas’s course when it was agreed to allow Mr. Cummings to give his. Before leaving Chicago, it happens that I had advised Mr. Cummings to drop that course, & he assented. Hence, although it appears in our programme, it will not appear in the quarterly calendar. Even though he expected to give it an economic treatment, I felt that the could use his powers better elsewhere. As to all the other courses they have a purely economic raison d’être; and when first sent to Mr. Small he found no difficulty in seeing clearly the line of demarkation between his field and mine.

That the courses should “fit into each other” in the two departments more than they do now, it would be our wish to arrange; but I think it would be difficult to do it better.

May it not be possible that the remarks you have heard have come from people who really know very little of the actual work of the two departments? Certainly in connection with the examinations of Mr. Cummings and Mr. Learned [Learned, Henry Barrett: A. B. (1890) Harvard; A.M. (1894) University of Chicago], Mr. Small was eminently fair & candid. If there is anything more explicit than you have written me, I should be glad to hear of it.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]
J. Laurence Laughlin

 

Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Harper, Judson and Burton Administrations. Records. Box 57, Folder “Laughlin, J. Laurence, 1892-1917”.

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Department of Political Economy

Social and Economic Ideals. Plato. Aristotle. Aquinas. Machiavelli. More. Hooker. Hobbes. Locke. Modern schemes of social reformation. Reading and Reports.

4 hrs. a week, [Double major]. Autumn Quarter.
Dr. Cummings

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

The Historical Sociologies.—Exposition of significant classical, mediaeval, and modern attempts to interpret social phenomena. Criticism of data, methods, and conclusions.

[Double major] Summer and Winter Quarters.
Dr. Thomas [Fellow in Sociology].

 

Lecture-Study Department (University Extension Division)

Utopias: (1) Plato, The Republic. (2) More, Utopia, (3) Hobbes, The Leviathan. (4) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. (5) Socialistic Dreamers: St. Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, Cabet. (6) Bellamy, Looking Backward.

Daniel Fulcomer, A.M., Lecturer in Sociology.

Source: University of Chicago. Annual Register, 1893-1894, pp. 47, 63, 246

Image Source: University of Chicago. Cap and Gown, 1895.